Category Archive

MP3 for download (upload to Archive.org failed sorry)

Well, here it is - the talk I ended up giving in Tasmania. It wasn’t quite the doozy I was hoping for and as always my nerves got the better of me, but it seemed to go down well if the after talk discussion is anything to go by.

Other formats (incl mp3)

Konrad has put together a charming video of my drawing in Second Life. It really motivates me to want to finish it more. There are lots of little details that need to be added, not to mention interior design, info signage and life sized avatars to ‘wear’ before entering. (I really want to create an avatar for Ivan Illach and Jean Pain). But my SL building skills aren’t very efficient and we’ve run out of ‘prims’ to draw with.

The video captures the general concepts and I had a thought that perhaps the next resident might be willing to approach the interior design? Detail the actual learning spaces following the general stuff I’ve set down, such as it being primarily a family living space that can be used for group learning for all ages, and following permaculture design principles.

Take a look at the video, see if it inspires YOU.

Otago Polytechnic will be signing the Capetown Declaration on Open Education this Friday 9 May in G106 at 12 noon NZST.

While I and several others are on record expressing reservations over the wording of the Declaration, this signing is more about our expression of support for the spirit of the thing, and reaffirming our commitment to open education formally set in place by our Intellectual Property policy (2007).

Otago Polytechnic has been at the fore of almost every recent step in the international effort for Open Education including significant work on the Wikieducator platform; use of popular and internationally recognised media and communication platforms; developing an Intellectual Property Policy in line with open educational practices; adopting a NZ Creative Commons Attribution copyright license; and ensuring that its spokespeople are very much a part of the dialogue on educational media and communications nationally.

As a result we have featured in international news: twice on CreativeCommons.org; twice with the Commonwealth of Learning, numerous times in educational journals and quite a few weblogs. Many thanks for all this support. Our joining in the Capetown Declaration will see that Otago Polytechnic remains in this spotlight, confirming our commitment to Open Education and our role in leading New Zealand towards a progressive and appropriate future for its educational institutions in our local and global society.

I sincerely hope as many people as possible can drop what they are doing and be there to show support for this act of solidarity and leadership. Otago Polytechnic will be the first education institution in Australia or New Zealand to join 157 other institutions in the Declaration since it was penned September 2007.

jtneil’s Del.icio.us alerted me to this excellent article on the academia vs wikipedia issues. What to do with Wikipedia is an article that truly gets it in every way. I could barely contain myself when reading through it! At last, a concise and easy to access summary and idea on how Wikipedia (et al) can and SHOULD fit into academia.

And for an example to lead the way - see Brian Lamb’s reviews of Professor Jon Beasley-Murray at University of British Columbia doing exactly what William Badke suggests.

The KAREN project has started a wiki. This is a great first step to community engagement and genuine consultation. Trouble is, with 67% of NZ not connected to usable Internet, most people probably are not aware of the wiki, or how they might go about contributing to it, not to mention that the development of a participatory online culture in NZ is going to take a few years AFTER we have 80% connected. So the KAREN wiki risks becoming an echo chamber that simply reinforces the direction KAREN has been heading with its handlers. Those in NZ who are connected, participatory and interested in NZ cultural development, please join that wiki.

I’m in there with a lobby page to use KAREN to deliver free broadband access to regional NZ via optics to nodes as far as we can reach, and then wireless mesh from there.

This past month I have been following a friend’s tour of Vietnam. He took with him the highly portable and wireless enabled Asus Eee. Almost everywhere his partner and he went in that famous little country, they had FREE ACCESS TO BROADBAND WIRELESS! What is it that Vietnam has that NZ doesn’t? Community minded government by chance?

If you are in NZ, I hope you will at least add your name to the lobby, or even better - help pad the proposal out. With a good lobby, I think we might be able to steer KAREN in the direction of sharing some of that pipe to offer connectivity to everyone in NZ. I know that will do more for NZ learning than any other project I have seen happening with KAREN.

It is difficult to over state the significance to me of the experience of using Second Life for drawing and networking my learning about architecture, sustainability, and SL rendering.

The simplicity in learning the drawing tools, coupled with the ability to meet numbers of other people in the actual model who would then discuss and help me build the model was a very potent learning experience.

In this blog, I have hinted on numerous occasions my interest in architecture and spacial design. But up until now, I really haven’t found a way to delve into that interest beyond the confines of the education network I have built around me. Books and websites have always been on a level that is just beyond reach, kind of polished, finished, packed with closure, difficult to imagine myself involved in. Talking with people in the architecture and design profession has always been steeped with seeming ego, dogma and expressed limitations on what I should do and when. And following blogs as been a distant and passive affair.

About a year ago I installed Google Sketchup and started using it to bring some of my pencil drawings to perspective. I have used it a bit to plan the renovations on our house. But Sketchup was only another drawing tool, one that is looked down on by the professionals, and it wasn’t long before I was returning to pencil and paper.

What Second Life has provided me with is an easy to master drawing application, along with an instant and willing number of people who would be there for me, who would look at and discuss my drawings as I did them, and who would share with me links and other information relating to what I was doing for the simple enjoyment of sharing and helping. This has been the part missing for me in my interest to learn more about architecture and design.

Up until this point, I have been alone in my room, drawing in my sketch book, imagining the day when I would meet someone who would genuinely engage with my efforts and share with me their own ideas, and involve me in a project. But that didn’t happen, who was I kidding? If the sketchbooks did come out, it was usually in front of some poor unsuspecting person who really just wanted to finish a day’s work, or didn’t really get what I was on about. Or it was on my poor wife Sunshine, who must of by-now listened to about the 100th repeat of my wide eyed ideas spouting from my yellowing old sketch book.

It doesn’t matter if the ideas I had - or the way I was trying to express them were any good or not.. what I’m talking about is the need we all have for encouragement and motivation to improve on and further our own learning. I could have enrolled in a course and paid a teacher to give me that … attention, but even then it would have felt disingenuous and limited by what that one teacher could muster after 20 years of putting up with it.

Instead, the people in Second Life have given me that attention and motivation. From the moment I created my first ‘prim’ I had someone in there with me, offering encouragement and help. And not just Konrad and Jo either (though their help has been immensly beneficial). It includes a group of fun-loving, miss-behaving people on a Friday night when I was up late burning some midnight oil. It includes a large group of people that came to meet me and hear about my project and discuss it and ask questions. It includes a number of individuals I met and who shared their time, advice, prims, links, scripts and contacts just to see me keep going.

At the very least this all gave me a sense of belonging, or a sense of people being somewhat interested in what I was doing. It took away that feeling of being isolated in my interests - that lonely feeling (real or not) of impossibility in finding anyone local who is interested in combining sustainability, Second Life and community learning ideas, and who has the time to go with me on a project for learning’s sake.

The online network I have, they shared objects with me, gave me links I should look at, and passed on contacts of people they thought I should introduce myself to. These people didn’t know me, but that’s just what they did. I often struggle with the comparison we all have to make with our local experiences. Like the times I have tried to talk to teachers of architecture, or design, or sustainability. It doesn’t take those people long before they are looking at their watches and making a way out of my “bright eyed and bushy taled” enquiries. That common response can be very de-motivating to most people. Such is my common experience in the f2f world.. there is no shortage of people expressing that same feeling in some way or another.

Its not just in SL that I can rave about this contribution to my personal learning. It happens everywhere online, and especially in the areas where there is still a relatively small number of people, or a niche area, or an area where there are values and shared beliefs and interests. The online network around permaculture is also very welcoming and generous. The online network that works on Wikipedia and Wikibooks is often ready to share links and help each other along. Bloggers (from the long tail).. the amount of energy and motivation I can draw on from these networks is quite something. Again, how do we reconsile that with the power down in face to face and local networks?

Is this just another form of over stimulation? Are the luddites right when they dismiss online interaction as unreal or false? In some ways they are right I suppose.. no matter how much energy and imput you can gather from an online network, the effect it can have on your actual life is largely limited to online media.. unless of course your network is also geographically local. But for me, every day I log off, charged with ideas and stories of people out there doing it, I’m back in the local.. its power down time and almost everyone ready to give me a dose of reality. Is this a sensation born of over stimulation.. or is the under stimulation coming back from local networks something to address? Which direction do we take into account here and when?

Anyway, I’m ranting as usual, and am probably entirely incohesive.

This amazing project that Konrad has taken me on boils down to is this:

I have drawn a concept for a building I want to one day build, using Second Life and its communities to draw and develop the model.

I have used numerous online networks to research and inform the model, and this drawing is only one step in many for this long term plan I have. That network has given me the motivation to take it all further.

In the process I have learned a lot about sustainable building, drawing in SL, communicating with online networks beyond my normal peers, and in that I have gained new confidence.

Now I am coming to an end with the VirtualClassroomProject, having reached the limitations of the model in SL Jokaydia, and want to take it further.

I have made numerous attempts to connect with a local group who are developing sustainable building designs, but what was that I said about powering down?

I think it will turn out that I will install the model somewhere more permanently in SL and continue to tweak the model, make variations and details, do a costing analysis for a real build, develop a website for it, and continue to try and find useful contacts who I can work with and possibly take something like this further - no doubt I will find them online… I already have one lead in Melbourne!

In the end, this project has helped me to render my private and two dimensional ideas into a public and socially supportive domain. That has shown me things I might never have come to see, and has certainly given me the motivation to go further with these ideas. It is a step in my personal and professional development that has been well worth it, and I thank Konrad and Jo very much for the opportunity and support. Thanks go out also to the people in Second Life, to the people around the Permaculture network, and the people around the Wikipedia network for their role in carrying my learning. I can only hope they got at least half out of the experience as I did.

We have done some initial trials in 2 of our courses, accepting informal engagement by people simply interested in our course, and supporting their learning free of charge along with the formally enrolled and fee paying participants. In both these trials, all the informal participants completed the course and enrolled afterwards for RPL. They were free to leave the course at any time, or free to engage at any level. It just so happened that in these trials, the informal participants were actually the most engaged and most motivated in the course. Much more so than the fee paying participants. It would be fair to say that their motivation and engagement carried the course somewhat, where the lack of engagement or motivation on the part of the formally enrolled would have seen it drag considerably. So the informal and free participants actively contributed to the formally enrolled learning.

This approach is not a new idea in this blog, I talked about free learning/fee education early in 2006. It seems like some people in Otago Polytechnic are ready to extend this trial to courses outside our Educational Development Unit. A proposal is afoot to develop 3 midwifery courses into open access courses along the free learning, fee education model. I hope it is accepted, there’s a lot that could be done with open access learning to topics relating to midwifery and child birth.

Way back in 2005 I think it was, I presented a model for free learning and discounted if not free education to Western Sydney Institute of TAFE. It included giving a student a laptop and broadband connection.. I think this would be a great next step for the Open Access Midwifery here’s how it goes:

Application: Single mum makes herself known to Outreach coordinator as someone wanting to train at home while looking after her baby. A curriculum is negotiated and it is decided that she could complete competencies in word processing and Internet research, learning online from home. (replace wordprocessing and Internet research with what ever learning outcome you think appropriate).

Issued laptop and network connection: The student is issued a laptop complete with a range of open source software needed to complete her course. She is also given a broadband connection. The laptop and connection cost the Outreach center a total of $1000 per year. (Such a laptop is now available in the NZ market. It is the Asus Eee PC, available at Dicksmith for NZ$599. Good broadband costs $30 per month. Total of package = $929).

Learn online through the wikiCourses: The student has an option to attend face to face sessions to help her with digital literacies and familiarise herself with the devices she will need to use to complete the online course. A range of competency based courses are made available on a wiki, and maintained through International collaboration.

Course fees discounted: Each competency unit has an assignment that requires the student to develop a resource that teaches someone new to the subject how to obtain that same competency. The student keeps notes and loads each assignment to her web journal. When she has finished a targeted number of assignments she submits her web journal for assessment and recognition.

Resources published: The RPL process notes the assignments and any excellent examples are given to the course coordinator for consideration to include in the course wiki. If that student’s work is used in the course wiki credit is given in the form of attribution and a discount to the course fees that are totalled at the end of the course.

Gap Training: Any gaps in competencies are forwarded to the coordinator and the curriculum is renegotiated, encouraging the student to repeat or attend face to face sessions to fill any gaps and achieve the competency.

Collaboration pays the way: When the student has successfully completed all competencies she is ready for qualification. Before obtaining her qualification she must pay her fees, including the cost of the laptop and connection (which she will own).

The final amount owed is determined by: (course costs + laptop and connection) - (assignments used in the course wiki) - (willingness to serve as a mentor to the next student learning online).

For example:

(Course costs @ $1000 + laptop and connection @ $1000 = $2000)

- (4 assignments used $800) - (20hrs mentoring $400)

= $800 owed by student.

Student has bought, teaching services, a qualification and laptop for $800, which could be still further reduced with more resource production and mentoring.

I have my slides ready for a discussion with the FLNW gang tomorrow
- UTC 8am Wednesday in Jokadia and Skypecast. Thanks to Peter Shanks wonderful FlickrCC for helping generate the slides. I’m hoping for some discussion about our work here developing open education at Otago Polytechnic.

So The Future of Learning in a Networked World (FLNW) 2008 has started! What was originally a mad dash across New Zealand by a group of non stop and intense educationalists back in 2006, is now a group in Thailand touring schools, and another group online hosting a series of online events from Second Life to Skypecast.

First off the ranks was Leo Wong from China giving as a very open, honest and emotionally moving account of his attempts at using Web2 in his teaching. Already Alex has uploaded a rough edit of the audio recording, I have started a text transcription, Brent has cleaned up the audio and added intro and outros and posted it to Archive, and Stephan has followed up with Leo for a second interview! Leo Wong’s slides he prepared a day or two before his interviews are available on Slideshare. Powerfull collaboration across 3 different countries in the space of 12 hours. Expect more.

The FLNW Itinerary is still being filled up and adjusted by the minute, and the blog struggles to keep up with all that is happening and happened.

Beth Kanter went to Skypecast 2 hours ago, I am bumbed I missed it due to a work commitment, but Stephan Ridgway caught a recording and will be posting it anytime soon. I hear it was a really good dicussion and I’m looking forward to my chance to join in asynchronously…

The Thailand gang are meeting up in a few hours at the Manorah Hotel in Surawongse in Bangkok and so will begin their tour on Thai schools.

And all that was just today! Tomorrow looks to be a biggen!! Starting UTC 1am Wednesday in Jokaydia, the original FLNW tourers will meet up and reminisces the madness of the NZ tour. And then at 3am UTC Teemu Leinonen and I will continue our heady conversations about open educational resource development peppered with a bit of groups and networks debate in the UBC Colosseum in Second Life.

It goes on! Harold Jarche at 8pm UTC. Nancy White at 10pm UTC…

But there is still room for more in the following days. We expect to get audio recordings in from the Thailand group through those days, and I hope to pin Steven Parker down for a chat about Networked Learning in the Tourism and Hospitality sector… so watch that wiki page!

If a generation were given the diplomatic task of postponing any action in such a way
as to make it seem as if something were just about to happen, then we should have to admit
that our present educational age has performed as remarkable a feat as the revolutionary age.

That ‘Teaching’ is a Prodigious Illusion: In the Words and Form of Søren Kierkegaard and Russell Butson

Grand Dad once said to me, “there are 3 things a man should never talk about: politics, religion and another man’s woman”… Clearly I didn’t take that advice on, or was unable to avoid the numerous lanes into those subjects along life’s path. I think it’s sound advice, if you can get past the harmless chauvinistic overtones, and I think I’d like to add to the list. There are now 4 things never to talk about: politics, religion, education and another man’s woman”.That out of the way, let’s get into it regardless:

I’m preparing notes for a talk I’ve been asked to give at Navcon2K7 and I think I’m gunna have to keep the modernist/post modernist theme going on this one, seeing as it is a conference focusing on generationalism.

modernism and old schools

1. A state of mind
2. Fascism
3. Access DETnied
4. Memex

Postmodernism and new schools learning

1. Deschooling Society
2. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
3. Groups and Networks
4. Individualism and the best and worst of times.

Models?

1. Loganlea State High - Jenny Shale
2. Catholic School - Greg Whitby
   
3. New American School House
4. Youtube in school
5. History of Social Software

I’m going to check in with Stephan Ridgway when Sunshine and I pull into Sydney and check a few of these ideas off with him. Stephan is far better trained than I am in the field of sociology, and people from the arts and humanities are hard to come by in education these days it seems. Hopefully Stephan will have some time this arvo to round this talk off somewhat and take off some of the sharper edges that will only get me in trouble with the religious order of schools.

Web based editing is still bubbling away. Youtube has caught up with smaller video sharing services at last and is offering a web based editor they call the remixer:

Sometimes, instant gratification video is just the thing you need.

If you’ve ever uploaded from your cell phone, wished for an easy way to add titles and transitions, or just wanted to remix your own videos, Remixer is a great place to play. It lets you assemble your new video in an easy drag-and-drop timeline, and then publish it right back to YouTube. Your original videos will stay exactly the same.

I’m looking forward o giving this a whirl. Would be cool if I could use this thing to quickly create a slide show with audio from a Flickr feed…

So, in terms of web based editing we have image editors like FlickrCC and others. GoogleDocs. Youtube Remixer. Slideshare’s Slidecast. But why oh why is audio so absent? We more video sharing services then we can poke a stick at, but very few audio sites that cut the mustard. Where’s the Youtube for audio? Complete with embeddable player and URL hyperlinking?

This past week I have been up a mountain recording and participating in an avalanche safety training course.

It has been really interesting and I have noted heaps of ideas on ways online learning could compliment and enhance the learning in this course.

But for now, I’m just noting here that I absolutely snowed under with stuff going on this week. There have been a number of people asking where I am with my commitments (Alex, online learning communities course, Otago Poly staff).. and I just don’t know how long its gunna take to dig out of this! My email is 3 screens deep! My phone has 8 unanswered messages! and my to-do list is… well, I don’t even know where it is anymore!

On September 30, Sunshine and I will be getting married. That’s only 2 weeks away and we have 50 friends and family to look out for - most coming from over seas… So at this point, I think I’ll just have to put the majority of these other things on hold and prioritise this day.

William Lucas is a colleague at Otago Polytechnic. He teaches English to Adult migrants, and is the first social web contact I made at Otago. He and I share a serious concern for peak oil and often wonder what we should do in preparation for increasing economic and resource pressures down here in Dunedin…

William dropped off a CD copy of Robert Newman’s History of Oil today…

Now I’m recommending it to everyone here

At first, I didn’t know what to make of it… William noted that he was very funny… but at first I thought this guy wasn’t funny at all, boring, rapid fire, monotone,… what was William talking about… but I muted the useless TV (dunno why we bought that thing), put on my headphones and concentrated…

This guy is hilarious! All I had to do was tune in.. after that, I was absorbed.. and that’s a sign of a good performer in my books. But he’s more than a performer, he’s performance is a lecture, a call to action, an awakening, a very interesting point of view…

In the void that is the absence of anything sensible otherwise - Robert Newman offers very thought provoking and hard to ignore 100 mile an hour perspectives on the state of affairs in global politics, resource wars and depletion. But with a unique angle of comedy (for these topics anyway).

Well worth a watch. Up there with Zeitgeist, only better I reckon. Certainly better than the crap on your TV…

Slideshare just became the killer app for teachers! Synchronised audio with slides!! Thanks Alan for the heads up.

For example:

There’s a little storm brewing over here in Australia/NZ edublogging land, and its over the often contraversial wikipedia deletion policy. Sean FitzGerald makes a valid point:

Does anyone else see the contradiction here? The irony even? Wikipedia - the poster child of user-generated content, citizen journalism and the wisdom of the masses says that extensive reference to a topic on blogs, forums, chat rooms and wikis does not constitute notability.

If that is true… then what the policy is saying is that Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source!

The issue in question is the hastey deletion of a new and helpful entry for Zeitgeist the movie. If you look into what remains of the discussion relating to the deletion you will find a rather concerning point - that the page (and all its history and discussion) was deleted within 3 minutes of the creator (Squarepush3r - no details) asking for a hold on the action!! The tagger for deletion (Matticus7 argues that the hold should have had a discussion post relating to the reasoning for the hold, the creator argues that 3 minutes was not enough to create that reasoning post. The deletion was done by Stephen - no further details.

I find it quite disturbing. Not helped by the fact that I think the movie is significant - if only for its value in agitprop. But also because the transparency of the deletion process is not all that clear, in that the original page is gone and blocked from starting again! along with any chance to discuss its significance or to review the deletion process…

PS. I forgot to add the link to GodlessLibralHomo’s pretty thorough overview of the issue.

I am seriously reconsidering everything I do and think after this. I must keep love in mind, heart and hand while I fend off the overwhelming fear that much of this movie brings to me..

This is a long movie, and one that I recomend you download rather than stream. You better be comfortable, warm and secure when you watch it, and have time to spend with yourself and then loved ones afterwards.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Thanks Sparker for the pointer. I dunno what to think - in search of the truth…

New video service hey!spread helps you upload one video across many of the leading video hosting services! Teachertube not there so too bad for the compulsive teachers out there, but the following services are:

• YouTube
• MySpace
• Google Videos
• Yahoo Videos
• Dailymotion
• Blip.tv
• Photobucket
• Metacafe
• Bolt
• Putfile

And the Blip.tv users among us might be aware of Blips little distribution features that sends a copy of your video to archive.org so that’s just about all bases covered.

I’ve been after this for some time now, asking every firefox extensions developer I met to make me this tool, but thanks to Brent sending me a lil gTalk message - I have it now, and its oh so web2 user friendly! Actually, its quicker and easier to use than the upload interface of all the main video services!!
I’m not going to waste pixels explaining why I need to upload videos across servers so bad, but I’ll just call it promotion and backup.

One thing Hey!Spread (or upcoming competitors) need to add, is the ability to add my own file server to the upload options. Here in NZ, its pricey and unreliable to call files all the time from over seas servers.. so the ability to add a local server would be helpful for that.

Its been a bit of a video night tonight.

First up: Wikis in plain English

From the same guys that brought you RSS in plain English.

And then there’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off…

WOW!

But.. I had a nasty time getting that TED talk video to stream in it just stopped and started, and stopped again. So I search youtube for a reliable copy. Sadly there was no copy of the TED talk recording, but there were a host of other videos that demo the same stuff - just not as spectacular:

Photo tourism full

and while I’m into my favourites at the moment…

“Kinetic Sculptures” strandbeest Theo Jansen

You can download Youtube movies with the Youtube downloader (make sure you save the download as “filename.flv”)
You can change the flash video (flv) into handy little Quicktime movies with the Videora iPod converter.

Jeez, I’m burning the midnight oil tonight. Am giving a talk at WiAOC 2007: Webheads in Action Online Convergence and I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew! So if your keen to hear me struggle through a difficult talk.. tune in..

1. Here’s my slides
2. Here’s my article (Still a work in progress actually)…

I’ll be talking to these slides at 12 noon NZ time (12 Midnight GMT) via EdTech (I think - though that link is to Webheads.. maybe they’re the same these days?…). As much as I respect Webheads and EdTech for all the great stuff they do, I find their websites quite difficult to get around in. I think if you go by the schedule you should be OK.

Our gun 2.0 librarian Wendy has posted a nice little round up of the Wikipedia debate in academic and higher education circles.

One professor discusses why his history department banned their students citing information from Wikipedia. Another explains why she asks her students to use it for their research assignments.

Post includes an audio recording of the debate, notes on critical thinking skills, and related local links.

Wendy asks what a new look library would look like? What services and features would it have?

You got ideas and a few minutes? Drop her some thoughts hey…

My quick thoughts that I left as a comment:

Great to see you’re getting wireless. Will it be free and open wireless? Like Hoyts? Doubt it, but that would be great. You could limit access still, by making a splash page for people trying to get on would have to go past first - that way minimising traffic a little and promoting the library service with a nice “this service is happily provided to you by Billy Bob - making access to information free and easy”

I would plaster the walls with how tos.. how to set up a blog, how to critique a wikipedia article, where to get free pictures, how to use YouTube… stuff like that, the list would be endless. Make them nice and large, but printable to A4 handout as well.

Laptops to loan out. Laptops to lease. MP3 recoders. Bluetooth file servers for lecturers to load MP3 of their lectures and for students to load the MP3 to their phone when they walk in.

24hour access to computer labs, with community events like LAN parties possible.

I was on my way to work this morning and caught this on the TV before I left. I’ve loaded it to YouTube so others can see it too. It is a brief TVOne Breakfast look at Blogging, specifically the Qantas Media Awards (what a lame website!!).

I think it an interesting insight into NZ Mainstream media perspective of social media. The Breakfast host is your usual self assured, arrogant kind-a-guy that you get on these shows, and I thought he was pretty subdued in his dismissive attitude of blogging compared to other things I’ve seen him have a go at. I think he was distracted by the fella he was interviewing actually, and didn’t want to risk looking silly with all this techy it geek stuff.

After note: Comments made by Caroline, and a few others have taught me lots about the TVNZ and Breakfast website. I was impressed to see that all the shows are recorded and eventually offered as streaming media. I wasn’t able to find the Breakfast recording above, but Caroline found it and offered the following links:

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/tvone_minisite_index_skin/tvone_breakfast_group

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/488124/1028238

http://tvnz.co.nz/cda/tvnz/video_popup_windows_skin/1028307?bandwidth=128k

At the time of adding this note (21st March) the streaming media file didn’t come down with audio, so I’ll keep theYoutube copy up until I see a working version.

If you’re involved in formal education at a tertiary level, no doubt you know what a course outline is. You might have a different name for it so I’ll describe it a bit more… its probably a stock standard, dry as 1 month old sheep shit, 1 or 2 page text document full of incomprehensible statement to do with what the course is about, what the objective are and what a participant can expect in terms of learning outcomes. Its usually one of the first handouts issued at the start of a course, and can even be a legally binding document!

I’ve started working with our course in Avalanche Safety. Its a small course with one person holding the fort in the off season. We have met twice to discuss ideas for enhancing the flexible learning options, and the quality of the media used in the course. So far we have looked at Youtube, Flickr, Wikis and SecondLife. (Can you believe that it is conceivable to set up an avalanche simulation in SecondLife!).

Anyway, I was sent a slide presentation that is used to both promote and introduce the course. We wanted to add some tunes to it and make it over all more compelling. The original slides had some really nice pictures in it, so it helped having a lecturer with a sense of media aesthetics already!

My objective was to create new slides with slightly more enhanced graphical freedom, and to create a video from them with some cool audio and load it to youtube.

What l I did (time is always the issue) was:

Pull the photos into separate layers of a single 640×480 image file in my image editor (GIMP).

I added text to different layers again based on the text in the original slide presentation, and permanent graphics like a logo and frame on the top layers.

Then I exported images based on what layers were switched on or not, naming them 001, 002, 003 etc - resulting in 31 slides in sequential order based on their file names.

The next step was to import all the images into a free video editor (in my sad case that happened to be Windows Movie Maker).

Thanks to the file naming, I was able to select all the images and drag them onto the editor’s timeline having them stack up in order.

The next step was to find some reusable music, so I popped over to CCMixter and found a track by one of my favorite musicians there who happens to license CC-By from time to time.

I imported the MP3 to the movie editor’s audio time line then just adjusted the images to fit the beats and rhythms, adding fade effects as I went.

Exported the movie in the crappy Windows format, but uploading it to Youtube makes it viewable in the free world.

The result of this simple exercise follows, but what I really want to point out is the potential for it being a course outline that, when handed to me as one of the first things in the course, would help me to say “yeah! I want in on the course! I’ll give it a shot! It looks interesting..”

Hopefully Blamb isn’t asking for movies just about Web2, and is actually calling it The Web 2.0 Online Learning Film Festival based on its organisational structure. I also hope that they’ll give the finger to copyright and download youtube films and remix at will!

Here are my nominations:

1. Duck and Cover - Bring back the bomb!
2. Can I get an Amen - Just how stupid copyright is, and how sampling rebellion should be
3. Admiral Cigarettes - Theatre in movies, teaching in LMS. How long it takes to realise new media
4. Le Grand Content - the truth about content
5. Voices from a new American School House - Ideal
6. The Future is Open - I can’t wait!
7. Ask Ninja, What is Podcasting? - Best explination of podcasting yet!
8. What to do in a zombie attack - one to compliment Duck n Cover

Do they still read Brave New World and 1984 in Australian High Schools?

I’m of a generation that was pounded with it.

Add to that: Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451, Children of the Dust and a particularly nasty doses of Mutually Assured Destruction, and the rape and Pilgerism of a new and true Australian history.

As we approached adult hood (about the same time consumer societies could buy chunks of concrete communism from Berlin), we launched ourselves from stages into invigorating mosh pits of reckless abandon. Only for it all to end when Kurt blew his brains out in the garage (or was it murder? is there a difference?).

We became the suicide children of the sold out baby boomers. But soma saved our shallow souls that day, and electronic rave gave those of us who survived a marching beat to the future. A future that has been sadly hijacked by nazi neo cons and free trade floozies spawned from the last breath of Thatcher punks. Now the perfect rendition of anarchy is the only viable response

I wonder what the world will be like when the suicide children start to take the reins? Have enough survived past the last 10 dark years for this to still be a possibility? Or is the last person turning out the lights not aware of the party that’s been planned?

I took my subscriptions back into Bloglines today. Google Reader had some nice features, but one key thing it doesn’t have is socially networked links. There are times when I need to quickly share a few feeds with another teacher, fellow student or a friend. This is not easy with Google Reader, but with Bloglines they just view my public Bloglines account and import the feeds into their own account… it’s a bit like Del.icio.us on that count.

Another aspect that Bloglines has over Google Reader is the ability to see who else is subscribed to the feed, and then to look at their feeds. I think this is a useful assessment tool for teachers, a feedback tool for publishers, and a research tool for network surfers.

I saw this shortcoming of Google Reader straight away, but at the time I was willing to go without them for the pleasurable display features of Google Reader. But after about 2 months use, I got used to those novelties and started to really miss the social network features of Bloglines.

Basically, I prefer the simplicity and socially networked aspects of Bloglines. Google Reader thinks a bit too much for me, in its effort to make news reading more seamless. But having a machine think for me is more often than not an annoyance.

Tama’s eLearning blog just pointed to an incredible article by Henry Jenkins titled from Youtube to YouNiversity. An absolute must read for anyone engaged in media, information, communications, education, sociology, … its a reasonably short and accessible read, but one that I think is so good I hardly know what to do with it!

This is now beyond a joke. The vast majority of the Australian Education sector is blocking access to social media. Our public servant administrators in the State Education are clearly not hearing a single thing from this blogger’s little network. Youtube is now “banned” in Victorian public schools in an effort to “clamp down on bullying”!!

“Guess I’ll stay at home a bit more and do my bullying from there, or maybe I’ll just distribute the evidence of my bullying across all the video platforms… yeah, that’ll do the trick, these teacher bosses clearly have no idea, they probably don’t even know about eyespot, blip, gVids and all the others. God! I hate school…who can I bully to take this pain away”

Thanks to Peter Allen from the TALO eGroup for pointing this miserable news out.

Stephen Downes posts his design for a conference. A vivid depiction of an open and energised space. I could have used this design before we ran FLNW, but we have it now. There are some very unique and exciting ideas in this design. I can’t wait to either be at one, or help organise one.

Check out this fun toy! I look like the following celebrities.. Which celebrity do you look like? Thanks Hadashi for another fun pointer.

I’ve been kind of perplexed by Wikiversity. What is it? Why do I feel it to be so important for us to use? Why don’t I like so many aspects of it? How does it differ from Wikibooks, Wikipedia, and Wikieducator? Why should we use mediawikis like these over wikispaces - which is after all, a bit easier to use and can have a more satisfying result in terms of multimedia content? Why are the staff I work with seemingly reluctant to use it? And a growing list of questions I can’t yet put words to.

I was reading through my wikiversity talk page - (a rather strange way in which communication happens between editors of a media wiki), and discovered a message from JWSchmidt that I had over looked. It points to MetaCollab wiki (sheesh! another wiki!!) where an explanation of Wikiversity is offered. It is a fairly informative article, but no where near as stimulating as the discussion page behind it.

In that discussion page is a point made by Lion Kimbro which blew my mind! I dunno if it answered many of my questions, but it certainly helped me to reconsider the questions I am asking and hopefully set me on a path towards asking better questions. A particularly enlightening exerpt is as follows, though I fear its impact will be lost by me quoting it out of context. I really urge you to have a read of the full article by Lion, and then the responses.

The idea is that people who are less knowledgable about a subject very much should be a primary actor in the authoring of the text. Not the sole actor- you need experienced people to perform correction, offer up alternative explanations, to make sure that it’s not wrong. But I think that beginners have unique advantages in teaching other beginners. Reasons: They understand their own misunderstandings. They have strong empathy with other learners, because they are at the same place, or just a single step beyond. The beginner is motivated by the need to make their understanding more concrete. (As different than the bored expert, (this is not a criticism, just noting a fact,) who has already covered the subject material a million times over.) It is conceivable that a vast lattice or network of beginners can, if properly made to understand what they are doing and why and how, and that there are people who will correct them if they miss-state a thing, that they could make far better artifacts for teaching, than the teachers themselves.

Side note: I think this is what edublogging was in 2005/06 - a sudden spike in beginners, all furiously working to concrete their knowledge and so created information for other beginners… But what is it now? why has that energy seemed to drop? I have certainly noticed it in me and the Australian network at least. Are we all now bored experts? Are teachers who do not maintain a sense for learning in their field, destined to become bored experts? I’m not bored by the topic, but I’m bored by the walls. And the 2nd wave I am experiencing are not nearly as energised..

Anyway, the point of this post was to point to that article by Lion.

I want a wiki called wikilearner. The names Wikiversity and Wikieducator are problematic. At the very least they reinforce the old power laws of institutionalised learning. Wikilearner helps to promote informal, socially constructed learning in my opinion. But that’s just a name, the trick is, as Lion puts so well, is how to build a community of perpetual beginners around it. A place where experts do not stagnate, become bored and inadvertently suppress new learning.Will it have to be a constant migration to “the next big thing, or can a communication platform successfully reinvent itself enough to give a strong sense of life long learning to all its participants… I guess this is the question facing more commercial domains like MySpaces at the moment. How do they sustain their social growth?

Dave pointed out a cartoon that I just had to mess with.

D’Arcy Norman has posted some concerns about SecondLilfe that are worth a quick read. There are a few links out to 3D world projects from the past, in an attempt to discredit the “next big thing” status of SL. That “next big thing” line get’s used a bit, and I think it is a misleading statement. To me it kinda makes out that things come and go, that it all passes by. Those historical references to other developments in 3D worlds are all contributions to the same thing - an acceptance of a 3D virtual world. So while SL may be the “next big thing”, its also part of the web3D, I think it’s mistake to think that it will pass. I don’t think that’s what D’Arcy’s trying to say - but I do think it is what many people will hear.

Apart from that, D’Arcy levels some interesting criticism at the SL platform and concerns for the culture that it may build. I have been keeping links to comment other comment about SL btw.

For me and SL.. I seem to have chilled out on it a bit. Maybe it was the Christmas break and my reconnecting with a first life a bit more, but I also find SL a little too big to have in my daily routine. I’m comfy in my browser, 2D window view, and the speed at which it and I can move. SL takes too long for me to start up, and too long to browse about. I need a reason to go into SL, and then I find I need a considerable amount of motivation to go in. Once in there, I really enjoy it and find it very engaging - its just that initial step.

So I’m increasingly looking to SL as a web conferencing tool, and less as the platform I access the Internet with. However, if a 3D virtual world became as  quick as my browser - that’s when I’m back to thinking about it as a platform..

If you work behind the iron curtains of some State Education Departments and can’t get access to the socially networked learning domains, then Wara has a simple solution for you.

Fade out… “all and all, you’re just another brick in the wall…”

PS. Some interesting comments follow Wara’s post.

A few days ago I took a deep breath and logged a help desk job asking for a go ahead to install Ubuntu. Within 1 hour a very helpful fella (and GNU/Linux lover) was down to see me. He said, yep, no worries, but you won’t be able to easily access your work email or local network drives. I said I’d think about it and get back to him…

A few days later he was down with some extra RAM and installing VMWare. What I have now is a computer that is running WindowsXP and Ubuntu at the same time. I can use the XP to access the work email and shared drives, and Ubuntu for everything else. When I start the computer in the morning, I land in XP land, but I start the desktop shortcut the VMWare and tell it to open Ubuntu. It starts up the free world in the VMware window, and then I full screen it.

I’m typing this post on Ubuntu and loving every key stroke of it. Its hard to explain why I am so happy about this - I mean to some people, I’m just using another operating system.. and by choosing to use 2 systems, I’m actually creating more work for myself and you might say the IT Support guy as well. But those people you might just call, users with a rather narrow view of it.

But I think it’s about quite a bit more than just the user. With every key stroke I remember the digital divide that is getting smaller thanks to the work of GNU/Linux and related software. With every key stroke I am thinking how liberating it is to be developing the skills to use free software and never have to be bound to something that costs me a lot of money and likes to change the rules as we go. With every key stroke I feel more and more connected to a community that is passionate about freedom, openness, re-usability, empowerment and many other principles that go way deeper than user, lock in and profits. With every key stroke I feel one step closer to helping that community and contributing back into it.

Many thanks to the Otago Polytechnic IT support unit. They are easily the best support I have ever had in any job anywhere.

I reckon you have 4 seconds to make the right impression on someone when trying to explain/convince/sell them something. This is not quite the same as attention span, it has more to do with countering prejudice, getting a foot in the door, initiating interest. Get that far and you can start to rely on measures of attention span.

4 seconds, that’s about enough time to get 8 or 10 words out - so make them count. For that reason you have to choose your words carefully, and never use words that require further explanation. With this in mind I’m going to very conscious of my pitch to technophobic teachers and try to use words they should more readily identify with.

1. Web2.0 and Socially networked software social constructivism
2. Online presence and identity as well as network and online community the top 3 levels in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
3. eLearning, mLearning, flexible learning and blended learning etc learning
4. Blogging Vygotsky-ism
5. Software Media (Thanks Simonfj)
   

any more suggestions?

Nancy White points to an animation explaining the simple process of peer assisted problem solving. Check it out, its a pretty cool little animation with a charming voice over imo…

If only it was easier to find a quality facilitator! That is something we realised in the FLNW tour - good facilitation services are very very hard to find. Of all my contacts, I can think of very few that I think would be a good facilitator, and I know I can never remain a safe distance from any topic so that certainly counts me out.

Then there are the woes of face to face communication. Prejudices on age, gender, accent, body shape, race, fashion etc etc, subtle and not so subtle, are such impediments to good dialogue I reckon - but that’s were online peer assist might work better. Using a web conferencing facility - not for lectures and presentations like we’re used to, but for peer assist problem solving!

I’d love to try that out.. I want kids in there, tradies, academics, a chinese, a frenchie, an american, a pommy, a mother of 6, a great grand dad, a poet, a musician, an engineer, a sex worker and a designer… but then we still need to find a good online facilitator

Did you mind that podcasting was synonymous to iPods? Did it worry you that everyone was irrationally spending over $500 on a glorified walkman? Does iTunes give you the shits? Do you find format, device and signal provide lock in downright revolting? Does all this apple-tech worship bother you? Are you resisting the beauty trance of Apple and its marketing? If you accidentally sat on your iPhone would you cry?

For me, its the NokiaN800

Read Stary Hope’s 10 reasons why

But I’d still cry if I sat on this too.

Thanks Leonard Low for the pointer, and a good read - Walled Gardens and Mobile Learning.

Which Programming Language are You?

Peter Shanks (aka Shaggy) based in Lithgow Australia has just pulled off something that Picasa and Flickr should sit up and take notice of! FlickrCC - A Creative Commons search engine that then enables you to crop, resize, add text and basic graphics, and then an attribution mark!!

Now we’re cooking with gas in the free, open, easy and web based application world.

Good on ya shaggy!

EdNA’s Recent Items RSS pointed to an article in eSchool News that references a interesting results from a study of high school and college student’s information literacy. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a link to the actual published results as eSchool News wanted me to register before reading the rest of the article.. no wonder bloggers kick linkless journalists. I did manage to grab this though:

The report comes from an evaluation of the responses of 6,300 students from 63 institutions around the country to ETS’s new ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Literacy Assessment. Students were given scenario-based items that were presented to them in 75-minute test environments. These information literacy tests included extracting information from a database, developing a spreadsheet, or composing eMail summaries of research findings.

The tests are meant to measure students’ abilities to overcome three challenges they typically have:

“The ability to identify trustworthy and useful information;

“The ability to manage overabundant information; and

“The ability to communicate information effectively

The study found that 52 percent of those tested could correctly judge the objectivity of a web site, and 65 percent could correctly judge that web site’s authoritativeness. But only 40 percent of students entered multiple search terms when researching a topic, and only 44 percent properly identified a statement that captured the demands of the assignment.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license.

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